Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Learn From History? Not a chance...

My husband told me about a strange moment he'd had the other day. He was driving home from work and listening to one of the many popular talk shows and suddenly heard his old high school history teacher in his head. It was all about the depression and what had caused it.

He got home and told me:

"It was almost like I could see him. He told us about how the general population had over extended themselves because they had discovered credit and then when the market failed, their money was gone."

Since he works in a high school, he asked a teacher who taught history about what he'd remembered. Had it happened as he thought it had? The teacher (who was impressed someone had actually remembered a history lesson) said in essence, what my husband remembered was correct, only it was margins, not credit. I guess margins are something more to do with the stock market, but it's still the same idea -- buying with something you don't have, hoping to make up the difference and pay off what you owe.

Sound familiar?

It seems like we, as an American public, are not learning from the past and neither are the legislators. Apparently, back then, black Monday was the year prior to an election year -- similar to now. Congress had suggestions for how to improve it, Hoover had suggestions -- but everything was held off for almost a year so that the president wouldn't get any credit and the American people were really suffering.

Once again, really familiar.

It looks like that when the economy is having issues, we all feel the only ones to fix it are Democrats. Unfortunately, it also looks like most of the creation of those problems come from the same source...so who fixes it? The Republicans. Only now, the Democrats aren't letting things go easily again.

Everyone talks about this 700 Billion Bail out, and how it's going to effect the big picture -- I'm not thrilled with the idea of government handouts (again) any more than the next person. That's not what our government is here for. But, in hearing this bit about The Depression, it makes me wonder if there might be something to it. Our country is a little different today than it was 79 years ago -- we are not a farm based economy any longer. We have less farmers than we have anything else, and our food needs are much more dependent on other factors, like gas, transportation, stores, etc.

My hubby figures it's all been planned out by the Eco-terrorists to tear our nation apart from the inside.

There have been wilder schemes...

But here we sit, plot or no plot, with a country struggling on where to go, who to depend on and wondering what is going to happen. If it were possible, we'd leave and find a peaceful island that didn't answer to anyone. Since that can't happen, we're gonna ride it out -- we are patriots. It's just scary...

Do you have a generator and food and water?? You might need it soon...